


Aurora

by Hedgi



Series: Apastron [5]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Comfort, Family, Gen, Introspection, Kara's love language is food lbr, The pain train breaks have been applied, but not as much as before
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-18 13:26:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15486795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hedgi/pseuds/Hedgi
Summary: Aurora: noun.1. A natural light display in the sky, predominantly seen in the high latitude.2. The Roman goddess of the dawnKara Zor-el has been rescued, but not all nightmares melt away with the dawn. Not all, but some--and perhaps some is enough.





	Aurora

Something warm and soft pressed down—no, surrounded-- her. Kara Zor-El kept her eyes closed. Soon, she’d have to wake up, and the dream would end, and it was such a nice dream. She could almost feel the mattress under her, like her bed back home. But home was gone. 

Home had been gone for so long. Just for a few more moments, though, she knew if she tried hard enough not to wake, she could pretend. She lay still, trying to memorize the gentle weight and feel of the blankets on her skin, not wanting to scare away the dream and wake up in her cold, dim room again. It had been so long since she’d had a good dream. Usually, if she dreamed at all, it was just as bad as being awake.

 

Finally Kara’s body betrayed her, her eyes opening. She made a soft noise of surprise. This was not her prison in the Bad Place. It wasn’t dark at all, and there was no thin red light, a cheap imitation of home that had still brought her slim comfort. For a moment, as she tried to sit up, her heart stuttered in fear, but then she realized she was still warm. The thing under her wasn’t like a mattress, it  _ was _ a mattress, not a thin pad on the floor, not a hard metal table.

 

Golden colored light spilled through a window with a broken mesh covering, warm on her face. She shifted, pulling the soft thing—a blanket, she had a blanket, she had  _ two _ blankets—closer. Slowly, she remembered. The man who had hurt her before had come back, and his face had been different—sad and angry and regretful, and he’d opened the door and opened the chains and spoken her language with a voice that broke on the words. He’d brought her to a woman, El-liza. Her name was in the wrong order, but all the things on this world were in the wrong order, she knew that much from listening to words she didn’t understand.  And El-Liza, who had her family’s name and spoke her language a little better than the first man, had brought her here.

She wanted to stay in that warmth forever, but carefully she slid off the bed. There  was no shock of cold cement under her bare feet, just a soft rug, and sun-warmed wood. Standing in that puddle of heat and light, she shivered, her feet and hands tingling. She was reluctant to step away, but she did, slowly. 

 

The open closet door held garments very like those she had worn back home, or her mother had, but in so many different colors, not just the whites and blues and blacks she was used to seeing. One thin, pale hand reached out to touch one of the robes that was the same soft yellow of the sunlight on the windowsill. Kara drew back with a squeak, then scrambled to pull the dress off the hook and hug it to her face. It was the softest thing she could remember touching, and smelled clean and vaguely flowery.

 

She wriggled into it quickly, shedding the ratty suit she hadn’t taken off for days before the rescue. 

The rescue. 

She was  _ free.  _ It hit her again, enveloped her like an embrace. She was  _ free. _

 

A soft knock at the door drew Kara’s attention, and a woman’s voice, stuttering out words clearly unfamiliar to her, but so familiar to Kara’s ears it hurt.   
“Kara? Up are you? Are you up? I’m breakfast making--er--making breakfast.”

 

Kara felt her stomach growl as much as she heard it, a horribly familiar sensation.  Caution to the wind, she skittered to the door faster than she’d expected her legs to carry her. She almost ran into Eliza, still standing in the hall, but stopped herself. 

 

“Good morning,” Eliza said, and she waited.

“Good morning,” Kara repeated the greeting in English.  She had looked at the books that night, straining to see them by moonlight. This language was harder than some she had learned bits and pieces of when traveling with her father, or listening while her mother worked, but she connected the bits and pieces she had heard and seen in the Dark Place with what she could hear and see now. She had always been good at languages. She took the hand Eliza offered her, letting her lead the way downstairs.

 

“Clark is coming soon,” Eliza said as she pointed Kara to sit in a chair. Kara did not sit, but Eliza didn’t Order her to. “I mean...Kal?”

 

“Soon?” Kara beamed. Her baby cousin really was ok. She had been so afraid he was in a cold, dark room like she’d been, all those months.

 

“Yes, soon,” Eliza nodded, getting out bowls and mixing things together.  _ Cinnamon _ , Kara named one smell in her head. Like the air at Star Haven. Her father had let her tag along on his last trip there. There had been so many bright colors, the sunlight there hadn’t been red like home or golden like here, and she’d held tight to his hand to avoid being swept up in the crowds. She had been too awed to be afraid, and too certain her father would keep her safe. 

 

She reached up a hand to swipe the tears from her eyes before anyone could see. She was supposed to be brave. A hand rested on her shoulder, not a painful grip, but like her mother’s touch. Her auntie’s.  Eliza met her eyes. Kara didn’t look down. 

 

“It’s alright, little one. It’s alright, Kara. Here. Eat.” She offered a bowl that steamed faintly, and Kara took it in both hands. It looked like food from before, from the Dark Rooms, but only at a glance. This grain cereal--not wheat, she thought, maybe oat-- was hot, and swirled with  cinnamon and milk. She ate as quickly as she could.

 

“Careful, don’t burn your--” Eliza started, and shook her head. “I forgot.”

 

“Mom?” Alex clattered down the stairs. “Oh! Kara. Good morning.”

“Good morning,” Kara repeated again, and held out her still half-full bowl. She wasn’t sure how much food there was, and Alex would need some too. It was good, but she could manage a day or so on what she’d eaten yesterday and already this morning, she thought. Eliza took the bowl, added another spoonful of the porridge, and handed it back as Alex filled a different bowl and sat at the table, digging through papers until she found one that Kara could see was covered in small drawings.

 

“Do you want the funnies next?” she asked. Kara blinked, nearly dropping her bowl. 

“Funnies?” she asked. That was paper, not a creature. Her uncle had had many--no, what was the word, she had seen it in one of the books---Dog. That was it.  _ Fun  _ was Dog here. D is for. 

“The comics. Um, here.” Alex showed her the paper. “Stories, but mostly pictures. Every day, the people who make them tell more story, or sometimes it’s just one.” 

Kara brightened. She liked stories. The drawings were all very different and silly, and she couldn’t understand all of the writing, but there wasn’t much. There was one of a fat cat, holding a toy bear close. 

 

Suddenly, she flinched, her ears aching. Again she heard the rhythmic, rushing noise she still couldn’t place, but this time she heard something else, too. Footsteps. The crunching of the gravel outside, the squeak of the porch. She covered her ears. Someone was coming. 

 

“Kara? What is it?” Eliza started towards her, and stopped as someone knocked at the door.  She nodded to Alex. “Alex, Kara, upstairs. If it’s safe I’ll call for you.”

 

Alex grabbed Kara by the wrist and tugged her towards the stairs, though Kara realized belatedly she’d understood the instructions. The sun-bright bedroom still felt so safe, but Kara trembled despite the warmth. After a moment, Eliza’s voice reached her ears.

“Come down, girls, it’s alright.”

 

Kara looked to Alex, who nodded. “If it wasn’t, mom would have called me Xandra.” The other girl’s confidence put Kara at ease,and she followed her back down the stairs, staying as close as she could. In the little room full of couches and soft chairs stood Eliza, and a man with dark hair. Kara’s eyes widened. “Uncle Jor-El?” she whispered, inching closer, then freezing. No. He looked like her uncle, a little, in the nose, the eyes, but he was younger, and his shoulders were different. His smile looked like aunt Lara’s. 

 

“Hello,” he said in Kryptonian that was better than Eliza’s, but still clumsy. “I am Kal-El, called Clark. You are from Krypton?”

 

She frowned. “Kal-El is smaller than me. How are you him?” She tried to say it in the human language as well, fumbling a little with the limited vocabulary. 

He shook his head. “I’m not sure. I landed here…” he paused. “Very small. Many years ago. When you?”

She frowned. “Not sure.” She held up two fingers, then three, then wavered back to two, three again. “My pod. Must have been stuck. Who took care? I was supposed--”

He took out a picture, one of himself and two humans, older than any humans she’d seen, with graying hair.

“They not hurt you?” she said in halting human-speak. 

“No. They took care of me. They found me and raised me. When I was… a little older than you are now, I started learning about where I came from. My...father left some things. That’s how I learned the language. Not very well.”

“No,” she said, reaching out to touch his hand. “Well enough.”  It felt so good, to hear her language again, first from her rescuers, now from...Kal-El. She hadn’t failed him. He’d been safe. He’d been safe.

 

“Oh, don’t--don’t cry,” he said slipping into English as he embraced  her. She clung to him, sniffling. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I should have found you, I should have protected you. I’m sorry,  _ sejehb _ .”

 

“Kara,” she said, though hearing the familial term warmed her as much as the hot food and sunlight had. No one had ever called her cousin before. “My name is Kara.”

“Kara,” he repeated, smiling. 

 

Finally, he turned to look at Eliza, Kara still hugging him. “What do we do now? Ma and Pa are getting older...and I can’t just show up with a twelve year old, I don’t know anything about kids, I --” his voice rose a little in panic, and Kara noticed. She flinched a little. Alex offered a comforting hand, and Kara took it with one of hers, the other still gripping her cousin’s shirt.

 

Eliza nodded. “We’ll figure something out. She’s welcome to stay here.”

 

“It should be her choice,” Alex piped up. Kara blinked. She was used to people talking about her, deciding things for her. Even back home, Before, her parents had told her their plan. She had not been given a choice, only instructions. 

 

“Kara?” Eliza asked. “What do you want? We could find a way for you to stay with the Kents, the people who raised Clark, or with Clark, or you can stay here with me and Alex.”

 

Kara released her grip on Kal-El so she could look at him, then study Alex and Eliza, the photo still on the table. She thought of the unknown. She thought of the closet upstairs with the row or warm, soft clothes, the washroom that smelled like flowers, the soft bed in the golden sunshine, this woman holding her close in comfort, the too-full bowl of cooling breakfast. 

She swallowed. “If stay--I still see Kal-El--Clark?” she asked. 

 

“Of course. I’ll visit when I can. I live far, but I’ll visit,” he confirmed. 

 

“Dr. Danvers, will she be safe here?” Clark asked, his voice soft, but not soft enough that Kara couldn’t hear. 

 

“She will be,” Eliza said, resolute. “I won’t let anyone hurt you, Kara.”

 

“Me either,” Alex put in, squeezing Kara’s hand gently. 

 

Kara blinked hard, her vision blurring a little, as she realized she believed them. “I--want to stay.”

 

“Welcome to the family,” Eliza said, gathering in everyone for a hug. “And finish your oatmeal.”

**Author's Note:**

> please love me--comments are amazing also hit me up on tumblr because this isn't the end of this au I have like four more planned (it turns out there are lots of nifty space related words that start with A)


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